Mistress of Scandal (Greentree Sisters 3)

“I’ll think on it, Martin.”

He nodded, as if he was satisfied with that, but she noticed that he was smiling, too.

There they were, both of them grinning as if they’d won the lottery and neither of them brave enough to admit it.

“Where is Mr. Thorne now?” Lil asked. “Miss Francesca said he’s gone away. Can’t say she was looking very happy about it.”

“He’s gone home,” Martin said. “But he’ll be back. You wait and see.”

The house had hardly changed. Ramshackle, he used to call it, but only because so many generations of his family had built their own bits and pieces onto the original Tudor manor. Worthorne Manor.

It was evening when he arrived, and he tethered his horse halfway down the driveway so he could walk to the front door. He wanted to take his time and allow the feeling of magic to creep over him. It was so beautiful, with the gold of evening reflected in the Tudor bricks and the small glass windows, while the lush gardens overflowed with flowers. The scent of roses drifted over him, and he thought about Barbara.

As a child she’d run through these gardens, more often than not with Sebastian chasing her. As twins, they did most things together until they were five, and then it changed. Sebastian went to school and Barbara stayed home.

She was a beautiful child, and she grew into a beautiful woman. It was Sebastian who brought Leon home to Worthorne with him. They’d met in London and become friends. Barbara and Leon fell in love.

He still remembered when his sister came to him, smiling, hopeful, to tell him that Leon wished to marry her. He’d been overjoyed. His friend and his sister to marry; it was surely meant to be. And then she said:

“He can be a little jealous.”

He was surprised. Leon, jealous? Impossible. He laughed and smoothed the cuffs of his brand-new coat. “You must stop flirting, Barbara, then he will not feel jealous.”

She smiled, but there was doubt in her eyes.

He ignored it. The wedding was arranged and his sister was suffering from nerves, he told himself, nothing more. Everything was perfect. The truth was, everything wasn’t perfect. He was twenty-two years old, self-centered, and unfamiliar with the shades of light and dark to be found in the world. He couldn’t conceive of a man who wanted to harm women, who enjoyed harming them. He preferred to believe his sister was suffering from prewedding nerves.

The wedding was held in the village church, with all their friends and family around them. Sebastian gave her away, as her brother and the head of the family. Their parents had died ten years before, and Sebastian had come young t

o the title. Barbara and Leon were to live in London part of the year, and for the rest of it they were to reside in Northumberland, on Leon’s estate.

Sebastian did not see her for four months, and when he saw her again she had changed. She was no longer his sunny-tempered, sweet sister. She didn’t smile as often, and she was wan and somehow timid. Leon went on to London to visit his friends, and she stayed with Sebastian at Worthorne. By the end of her visit she was more like her old self, and he told himself that it was the cold, bleak estate in Northumberland that was the trouble, that she should ask Leon to stay in London, or better still, at Worthorne.

“I will ask,” she said somberly, as if it was something she didn’t relish. He laughed, because the Leon he knew could be persuaded to change his mind very easily. “Anything for a friend” was his motto.

Sebastian saw Barbara only twice more.

Once was in London, at Leon’s house. She was quiet, she moved stiffly, and when he asked her if she was all right, she looked to Leon before she answered. Sebastian thought it strange, but when she would not talk to him, he shrugged. There were things to do, and he was a wealthy young aristocrat on the town.

The next time he saw her she was lying on her bed, laid out in her favorite dress, with flowers twisted through her hair, her dead, still face as beautiful as ever. Her murderer, Leon, had taken his own life in remorse, or so they said. Sebastian thought it more likely that, having murdered Barbara, he was not brave enough to face the consequences. His family had carried him back to Northumberland, to his estate, for burial, but Sebastian refused to let Barbara go with him. She had been shackled to her murderer in life, she would not lie beside him in death. At least, he told himself, he could give her that.

He wept. He berated himself for his blindness and his stupidity. Now that she was dead, he saw things so much more clearly, and understood what they had meant. Leon had hit her, hurt her, made her life a living hell. And he, her twin brother, had neither known nor cared. There was nothing he could do or say that would make it better.

That was when he decided to go away and turn his back on the man he’d been—the selfish and foolish boy—and become someone else. He must make recompense by helping others. That was when Mr. Thorne was born.

“Sebastian?”

He lifted his head. He realized he’d been standing in the middle of the driveway, staring at the front of the house. The sun was nearly gone and the air had a balmy, calm feeling, as it did sometimes just before night fell. A moth blundered into his face.

“Sebastian, is that you?”

There was a man standing at the bottom of the steps leading to the front doors. Sebastian knew him at once, even though it had been eight years since he last saw him.

“Yes, Marcus, it is me.”

Marcus laughed. A joyful sound. “You’ve come home!” he cried. “Here you are at last. Come in, come in. Everything is ready for you. Everything is waiting.”

Touched beyond speaking, Sebastian followed his younger brother into Worthorne Manor, and into his past.